Where does the narrative that the Arri Alexa looks film-like come from ??

[John Shell]

I've been hearing about the Alexa looking film like or closest to film and I just don't see it. Unless it has undergone obvious film emulation, every movie I've seen shot on an Arri Alexa looks digital just like any other movie shot on a RED or a Venice. Take the Marvel films for example, most are primarily shot on an Arri Alexa and they look nothing like film. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

Originally it came from how the saturation rolls off in highlights. Remember that alexa came out in times when it was normal for video cameras to have very saturated highlights just below the clipping point so alexa was much closer to how colour film handles saturation.

They really dont look like film but saying it looking like film helps to sell it to producers who seek production value

Edited October 15, 2023 by aapo lettinen

[Aapo Lettinen]

You can easily emulate a saturation roll off on any video footage in post but most fanboys like to use off the shelf luts and think cameras have very "fixed" look for not trying out stuff by themselves

[David Mullen ASC]

It’s the way highlights burn out to the clip point. If you’ve ever seen camera comparison tests and looked at what happens at 4-stops over, you’d see how the Alexa was superior to other digital cameras and behaved more like color negative. However the latest generation of competing cameras have gotten better. If you look at the latest HBO Camera Assessment Series, the best cameras for retaining detail in overexposed areas was 35mm film & the Alexa 35, followed by the Alexa Mini.

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I never heard that from any serious person. However, what was true of the Alexa, and not true of Red's DSMC1, was that you could get a nice image without doing anything to it, thanks to its internal circuitry and ProRes file format. You didn't need to Debayer or anything like that. This is so important to commercial DPs, for example. One commercial DP made the point that "gear **(obscenity removed)** matters", and he was right.

I recall one DP, forgot his name, who initially rejected the Alexa. But, when he put the right lenses on it, he was very confident in the image. This was from a video on the BSC channel. Lenses are important, too. ? 

Bonus anecdote: one commercial DP, many years ago, used the Red One. And he found that putting a cheap pieces of plastic over the lens made the image much nicer (to his eyes). YMMV.